Technology – Contemplating Writing

Finally Submitted!

Thankfully, our virtual team project was finally submitted on Monday. This project was a roller-coaster and I found the student experience very different from the workplace. The deliverable was very simple, but the journey had many elements and overall, I feel this comprehensive project is worth including in our MA program. Project management, collaboration with colleagues, communication skills, use of technology, writing, editing, translating, critical thinking and graphic design were among the skills needed on the team for a successful outcome.

The 4 C’s of Education, certainly needed on this project

What new skills skills have I developed?

I have a better understanding of how to write for translation from working on this project. It’s an important skill for technical communicators and something I have never thought about before.

I wrote part of the instructions and I know I did a good job, there was only one edit, however, I did learn from our editors on this project. They did a great job creating a style guide once they realised how disparate some of the writing was and worked hard to make the document feel like it came from one writer. They were meticulous with wording and taught me how to keep everything consistent throughout the document and eliminate unnecessary words. This is something I have been working on since September!

I have also learned how to approach project management and clearer guidelines should have been set out from the start. I found this great article on creating a style guide, design information and documenting the process which would have been a really useful guide for us.

Leadership on our project

We had a leader for each university on our team and in hindsight we should have had an overall project manager. As the team leader for the UL side I got the project started and created a project plan. As we had no overall manager, checking in with everyone took a lot of time and the editors were left with a lot of the decision making. One of the Paris students never engaged so their leader was our only contact point for translation. In Florida one of the students was very engaged and the others less so.

Project Management tools & collaboration with translators

Overall the tools worked well. We used Big Blue Button for calls and Slack to collaborate. I also developed a Gantt chart at the start of the project which clearly showed the due dates, holidays and task list which was very useful.

The lead translator was on the initial conference calls, but she had no experience ‘writing for translation’ and had no advice to offer. She was involved in choosing the topic and took a step back during the writing process. Engagement was poor during the translation phase until the very end of the project where she needed a couple of clarifications on sentences using Slack. Slack was our main collaboration took and generally worked well. It did get a little confusing at times and would have worked better with an updated action list. Slack was useful for feedback between the writers and editors and we set up private channels for this task.

We also used Google Drive for storing each version of the document and adding comments for editing which worked well in conjunction with Slack. No-one else on the team had access to the graphics tool chosen by the designer, until late in the project when one of the Florida students got access through her workplace so she could make necessary changes.

Creativity

Freedom to choose a topic, assign roles, select tools and develop our own plan is one of the strengths of this project. It forces collaboration and decision making from the beginning and teams must take responsibility for choosing their own path. It’s also a great opportunity to use new tools for a real project.

The graphic design element of the project should have been more creative. This never happened on our team unfortunately, one of the students had experience in graphics and put himself forward for that role. There was little engagement with the rest of the team on design and most of the feedback was never implemented.

The most valuable lesson I learned

I have managed my own team in the past, but never multidisciplinary teams. This project has taught me the importance of teams having clear guidelines on everyone’s roles within the team and exactly what is expected of each person, how they will communicate and collaborate with the rest of the team. Additionally, having a key decision maker in the group would have been useful for final sign-off of the document at various stages.

What to do differently

Hindsight is fantastic and having two graphic designers on the team should have made a big difference to the success of the project.

A master document to track all actions, no matter how small they were, would have worked well. There were times towards the end of the project when members were making the final updates which had been agreed on Slack, yet some of the tasks weren’t complete or there was confusion over exactly what needed to be done.

A style sheet was developed after the first writing phase. This would have been more useful before we started writing.

Motivation during the project

I was really motivated for most of this project, as we had good engagement, created solid relationships and developed well-written instructions. I like being part of a team and sharing achievements is great when everyone is working hard to realise the goal. At times it was difficult to keep motivated as we were so badly let down by the graphics designer towards the end of the project. It was really demotivating for the editors to have all their work ignored on the first design draft and I felt their pain. The designer going for two weeks holidays without giving notice to the rest of the team and saying they were only putting 20% effort into this project because that was all it’s worth was certainly unhelpful. I am disappointed with our final submission, which is demotivating for many on our team due to the amount of time spent on the project and we know this will affect our grade.

Completing projects with remote workers will be part of everyone’s future and I’m glad we had this opportunity. I feel more competent about anticipating issues that may come up in the future in a similar project. Those who disengaged from this process certainly lost out on valuable learning.

References

Hollis Weber, J. (2011)Developing a Departmental Style Guide TechWhirl.com, available at https://techwhirl.com/developing-a-departmental-style-guide/ [last accessed 1 April 2019]

My experience as a Blended Student

This week in EL6052 our lecture was on e-moderating online and blended courses which may be a key task for many of us in the future. Facilitation and scaffolding are keywords used by Gilly Salmon in her five stage model of teaching and learning online for interaction with students. Her model details the different stages students will go through and what levels of support they will need. Some critics feel that her model is just designed for fully online learners and doesn’t focus on other types of learning. I feel that her five stages could theoretically be applied to blended and classroom training also.

A short video of Gilly Salmon explaining her model

In my previous role working in Learning and Development in the corporate world, most of our training was classroom based with approximately 10% online. In the classroom training we used Moodle on a daily basis so students could follow the training material, learn how to use knowledge bases and take assessments. Students had to learn how to use various other systems and software applications. All of this required technical support for access issues and motivating students to use the systems in the correct way. Some students needed a lot of help due to poor computer literacy. Socialisation was really important in the classroom. I have always felt that students learn better within a group where there is a respectful environment and we spent a lot of time ensuring that students got to know each other and were relaxed in the classroom. This ensured that they would ask questions or request help when needed.

The trainer approached the students as a facilitator ensuring that everyone participated, shared experiences and helped each other through the modules. Through the active learning phase the trainer would ensure that everyone was on-track and would facilitate problem solving sessions. This would move to students being responsible for their own learning at the end of the program when they were starting to perform on the job tasks.

Even though I have attended most lectures for my blended MA program, I use the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to review lecture material, submit assignments, complete e-tivities and engage in forums. I love the mix of both. Having all the material available on the VLE is really useful and being able to easily contact lecturers for questions is fantastic. Lecturers were very supportive at the start and ensured we could access all systems at orientation. Online socialisation was achieved through introductions and an information exchange was facilitated through research proposal feedback and discussion. We are currently in the latter stages of the model but if we have to complete a new task we would likely be back at level 1 again. The model is fluid.

I feel I get a lot out of the lecture by being in the classroom and enjoy the interesting discussions on the subject matter. The personal contact with the other students is priceless. Last Tuesday we were really stressed so a trip to the market for a lunchtime therapy session and discussion of the assignments we were working on made everyone feel better. For me the blended model is a great mix, I’m not sure how I would cope with this course fully online.

References

Salmon, G. (2004) E-moderating the key to teaching and learning online, 2nd ed. London: Routledge Falmer.

Using Twitter as a Learning Tool

Most of the work has been completed on our virtual team project and we will be submitting our completed document next week. We designed a Twitter User Guide and our aim was to create a guide that would help a new user get setup and start using Twitter. While it’s not perfect, I think the end product is a useful document. We choose this topic as only one person on the team had used Twitter previously and he was a recovering twitterholic who had mixed feelings on the platform. The rest of us had just set ourselves up and weren’t quite sure what we were doing.

Now that I have been using it for almost two months I’ve started to think about Twitter as a learning tool for students. There has been some research on this topic and it is getting more popular in third-level colleges.

I like twitter a lot more than I thought as I’m not a fan of social media. I can see the value of using this tool in our course. It broadens horizons as different students have different backgrounds and will gravitate towards certain topics to post each week. Its brilliant to see such a broad range of interesting topics and I have lots of tweets ‘liked’ to read later when I have more time. I’d love if the application had a ‘keep’ or ‘favourites’ button rather than ‘like’ to bookmark these, it would be a little less judgmental.

The timeline also annoys me, is it ever in sequence? Apart from those two little criticisms I find Twitter is so easy to use which makes it a good choice for students, it shouldn’t stress them out too much. It’s defiantly a great networking tool, you can follows others in the industry and develop a professional identity. Is it a good learning tool?

E-Leariningindustry.com says that it is a good tool to engage people who like social media and the mobile version makes it really accessible. I love the fact that if you have 10 minutes to spare anytime of the day or night, you can browse, send a tweet and complete your weekly twitter assignment. I also think it would be really useful for communication on a course where there is no VLE.

Eva Kassens-Noor, an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University completed an exploratory study on using Twitter to enhance learning in higher education in 2012. Third-level colleges were encouraging staff to use Twitter to “enable interactivity, excite learners and foster greater student participation”. She examined if it aids in-class learning. She looked at how students apply, create and retain knowledge when using Twitter compared with more traditional methods.

She discovered that in some contexts Twitter will better aid students to learn compared to more traditional methods, however, in other contexts it would hinder them. She felt it worked well for engaging students in theory and practice focusing on real-world examples. In contrast if the instructor intends to foster critical, in-dept and self-reflective thinking among students, Twitter would be unsuitable.

I think that Twitter can be a powerful tool for educational purposes. We have created a really useful community of learning that I hope will continue past the assignment completion date.

References

Kassens-Noor, E. (2012) ‘Twitter as a teaching practice to enhance active and informal learning in higher education: The case of sustainable tweets’, Active Learning in Higher Education, 13(1), pp. 9–21. doi: 10.1177/1469787411429190.

Minister, L. (2014) Using twitter as a learning tool,
elearningindustry.com, available at: https://elearningindustry.com/using-twitter-learning-tool

Using Slack for your Virtual Team

Virtual team working is becoming more popular in technical communication, e-learning and many other disciplines. Whether it is the ability to work from home some days or a fully distributed team of co-workers or clients, we should think about management of people, process, leadership and tools. A good collaboration tool can help your team achieve higher levels of engagement and work ethic than an office based team.

In our virtual team project we are using Slack, which is a cloud based team collaboration tool. We use the free version of Slack, there are also two options where you can pay monthly or annually for premium level products. In the free version of Slack you can have unlimited members, however, it does have some limitations. You can only voice or video call one person, so you will need another tool for conferencing. The storage is limited to 5GB for uploads across the team and searching previous messages is restricted to the last 10,000. The free version was perfect for what we need and what I really like about it, is that it doesn’t keep reminding you that you are using a free version and doesn’t constantly send you special offer emails to upgrade.

So how does Slack work?

Slack is a messaging tool on steroids. Teams or organisations set up channels for different projects or tasks. You can have invitation only channels for certain projects that some members don’t need to see. We used this in the editing phase of the project, where feedback was shared between the editors and each writer privately and it worked really well. You also have a direct messaging channel with each person for private interactions.

Messages can include documents which is really useful or links to other tools. You will know you have a new message as the channel or direct message will be in bold. You can setup notifications if you wish, I chose not to. The use of emojis is encouraged and really useful if you want to give an idea the thumbs up or down. You have the option of starting a message thread to link conversations together which helps keeping track of discussions. You can also set reminders to follow-up on a message or pin important messages.

Why you should use Slack

Important Considerations

Teams will need to learn how to use it and decide what to use it for. Think about naming conventions for your channels to make it more intuitive. We had too many channels on our project and some weren’t used. There is an informative analytics space where you can see what channels are being used and when. This could be useful for project managers in larger projects or organisations. You may want to have a ‘water cooler’ channel for chit chat. We did this on our project and it was used sporadically. I feel it’s important for teams to work out how to engage on Slack, for example, deciding when to use private messages or encouraging everyone to set their status if they are away from the office or on vacation.

What else is good?

You can integrate up to ten applications on Slack. We are used Google Drive and Survey Monkey which proved really practical. There is also a whole section on keyboard shortcuts. Anyone born in the 70’s will love these! The help section works well, in fact every time you log in you get a tip from your friends at Slack. These are worth reading as you may get “you look good today” or “Happy Friday” messages which are so much nicer than a traditional loading screen.

What’s not so good?

There were a few niggly things. I keep hitting the return key on my keyboard, which posts my message. It’s annoying. Luckily you can edit your message and post again.

You can set follow-up reminders for messages, however, there is no task management element, you will need another application for that. Sometimes channels do get out of hand and are difficult to follow.
The free version is perfect for our college project but could be insufficient in the long run, especially if you are sharing lots of documents.

Overall, it’s a great tool, it looks cool, promotes social interaction and should cut down on the need for meetings to keep everyone in the loop. That’s defiantly a winner!

What will the future hold for Technical Writers?

I recently watched Daniel Susskinds Ted Talk on The Future of Work https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_susskind_3_myths_about_the_future_of_work_and_why_they_re_not_true and found it strangely reassuring. His big idea is based on three myths about automation anxiety and how us humans are fearful for our jobs due to the advances in artificial intelligence and robotics.

There is the terminator myth, that robots will substitute humans. Daniel suggests that the relationship will be complementary rather than replacements. We will all work on one big team. I’m sure we can all think of times when technology has helped us out and complemented our skills. In the UL library, the Automated System that picks your requested book from the archive and dispatches it to the information desk is a great example of how technology complements the library team. Staff don’t need to worry about off-campus archives or spend time dealing with lesser used items. They can focus on supporting the students with their learning and research and teaching them how to use the library resources.

The second myth is the intelligence myth. It is believed by many that machines must copy how humans do a task. He argues that how humans think and reason is not the summit of thinking and reasoning. IBM’s Watson, probably one of the most well know AI systems, this week was narrowly beaten in a debate with one of the world most expert debaters. In the 1950’s Alan Turning predicted that someday machines will think for themselves. Is Watsons ability to scan millions of documents and construct an argument enough? Even though the Watson failed at counterarguing and connecting with the audience to convince them, the performance was impressive.

Finally, he speaks about the superiority myth, that machines are taking away jobs from humans. We must admit that the world of work is changing all the time. In medicine, machines can scan thousands of files and diagnose diseases better than any human. Does that mean we won’t need doctors in the future? Of course not, their roles will change as they have done for hundreds of years.

So, what does this all mean for technical writers? Our roles will change also as the machine takes over the more mundane tasks. Content writing will move towards content curation. API documentation and UX writing will become more important in the industry as we learn to complement the machines.

My nine-year-old daughter has just asked me what I am writing about. ‘Oh, that’s just like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, she says, when I explain what I am doing. ‘Charlie’s dad lost his job at the toothpaste factory when they got a machine to screw the cap onto the toothpaste’. She’s right of course, change happens all the time and humans move on to new territory.

We have all adapted to new technology, a new boss, new career, new relationships, parenthood. Humans are highly adaptable. I think we’ll be ok.

References

Carville, O. and Khan, J. (2019) IBM artificial intelligence system debates a human and loses — but barely Los Angeles Times, https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ibm-debate-20190212-story.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fbusiness+%28L.A.+Times+Business%29&utm_content=Yahoo+Search+Results [last accessed 15 February 2019]

Faggella, D. (2019) 7 Applications of Machine Learning in Pharma and Medicine, EMERJ, https://emerj.com/ai-sector-overviews/machine-learning-in-pharma-medicine/ [last accessed 15 February 2019]

Setting up a Virtual Team

I have worked in virtual teams before in the corporate world. Usually what you get is a self-assured project manager who loves to delegate and take control and a team who all have a defined role and know what the project is all about. In EL6082 we have a diverse project team of students from Limerick, Florida and Paris, all studying different courses through conventional and distance learning, working on a project of our own choosing. There are so many variables, different assignment instructions, time zones, languages, skills, personalities and motivations, it looks like quite a challenge.

Week 1 has been a little frustrating. Evanna got us off to a great start with an introductory email and all UL students responded over the weekend. Then we waited and waited for the US and French students. There were issues accessing the Google Drive folder that had been setup and once these were sorted we felt much better.

By Thursday morning, I was a little anxious to get started and we had four students that hadn’t made contact and no plan! One of the team suggested using Slack to get started and agreed to set it up. This was great news as Slack is probably the most talked about collaboration tool right now and I have been hoping to try it.

One of the team suggested using Big Blue Button for calls as they have experience with it. As you know I love the internet, how would we get anywhere without google maps? On the downside though, internet conferencing can be a frustrating experience for all involved. This software was a little intermittent and the screen was rather cumbersome and some students couldn’t get their microphones to work. The call was long, and no-one really knew what the expectations were, however, we got going and the students on the call all chose roles and started to work on the team agreement. I took the role of project manager with the caveat that if anyone else wanted the role I was happy to hand over to them. Funnily enough, this hasn’t happened yet. I do like to step up and get organised, we don’t have much time to waste over the next few weeks. I thought it would be good for collaboration to get everyone on Slack and start to think about a topic. A project timeline was completed and by the weekend almost everyone had got in touch.

So, I need to be the self-assured delegator who takes control. A difficult task with such a short timeline and a large group of people completing a task that is unfamiliar to most of us. On the plus side, all the students seem like a wonderful group of people and have been really open about their strengths and weaknesses and forthright in sharing their experiences and preferences. Week 1 – People 1: Technology 0.

WordPress 101

I consider myself to be quite self-aware and I love so many aspects of the internet. You can check anything at any time. Is a shark a fish? Apparently, yes, it is. What exactly is the Brexit backstop? Well, that’s a story for another day.

What I discovered my new assignment was to set up a blog, I didn’t think I would enjoy it. New technology can be frustrating. I couldn’t find ‘WP Admin’ anywhere, I don’t believe it exists. The help section couldn’t help me. What should I customise? What should my blog look like? As I’m not a follower of blogs I don’t really know what’s expected. Blogs are just for marketing, fashionistas and influencers aren’t they?

Apparently not. They are for anyone passionate about a topic who would like to share. I can do that. While I have been writing this blog post I have already learned how to do lots of things in WordPress. Initially, it didn’t seem very intuitive. After an hour we started to get along. I understand it better now and it knows I’m approaching cautiously and is giving lots of prompts. I just got a congratulations email from WordPress for my first post. I feel appreciated.

I still don’t know where ‘WP Admin’ is or who to follow but I’m excited now to browse and read and like and share. I have my own little patch of the web to tend. Reflection is a positive thing, we should all be more mindful of what we are doing and what we have learned. This could be interesting after all!